Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

Iqaluit woman gets three years for killing lover

"No justification," judge says

KIRSTEN MURPHY

Jeannie Manning, 44, was sentenced to three years in jail this week for killing her former lover, Davidee Adla, then 44, on Sept. 1, 2001, in Iqaluit.

An audibly distraught Manning, formerly of Cape Dorset, collapsed and wailed after hearing Justice Paul Chrumka's sentence at a court appearance on April 23.

"The taking of a life is an extremely serious matter," Chrumka said. "There is no justification for the action of the [accused]."

In December 2002, a jury found Manning not guilty of second-degree murder, but guilty of manslaughter.

During the trial, the evidence showed that Adla physically and mentally abused Manning for years. Her defence lawyer, Susan Cooper, used that to portray Manning as suffering from battered woman's syndrome.

Manning said she stabbed Adla three times in self-defence – a claim Chrumka said he didn't believe, in part, because Adla was lacing up his boots and attempting to leave the house when she struck him in the back three times.

Adla was pronounced dead at the Baffin Regional Hospital the same day as the stabbing.

Manning, who wept and rocked during the lengthy sentencing hearing, kept her head down when Kumaarjuk Pii read her victim-impact statement to the courtroom.

Pii, of Cape Dorset, was Adla's wife.

Crown lawyer Ken Kehler requested a four- to five-year sentence. Defence lawyer Susan Cooper asked for a conditional sentence, which would allow Manning to reunite with her eight-year-old daughter.

Chrumka said Manning's case was substantially different than that of Mary Deschenes, an Iqaluit woman convicted of manslaughter in the death of her abusive partner.

Deschenes received a nine-month conditional sentence for killing her live-in boyfriend, Gilles Bergeron, with a single stab wound to the chest that penetrated his heart.

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information